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Amazon’s almost certainly working on a set-top box that will let you stream videos, play games, and possibly run other apps on your TV.  Details about the device have been leaking for months… and now it looks like Amazon might be getting ready to put the rumors to rest and officially unveil its TV box.
The company is inviting members of the press to an April 2nd event for “an update on our video business” and according to the Wall Street Journal, one of those updates could be a free, ad-supported version of Amazon Prime Instant Video. The other… could be the long-rumored Amazon TV box.
Update: Amazon tells Variety that it’s not launching a free video service.
Here’s a roundup of tech news from around the web.
- Amazon’s TV Box launching April 2nd?
In recent years Amazon has typically held press conferences only to announce new hardware products, so while it’s possible this is all just a way to get attention for the addition of new TV shows or movies to the Amazon Prime Instant Video service, smart money is on a TV box. [Recode] - LG G2 Mini goes on sale in April, starting in Russia
The phone has a 4.7 inch, 960 x 540 pixel display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor and a bunch of other features that make it a lot less exciting than the LG G2… but smaller. [CNET] - Paranoid Android only officially supports Nexus/Oppo devices, but here’s a list of ports for “Legacy” devices
The team makes one of the most popular Android-based custom ROMs… but if you don’t have a Nexus or Oppo phone device you’ll have to wait for someone to port the ROM to your phone. The good news is that there are people doing that for a number of devices. [+Paranoid Android] - Wearable snake oil: Calorie-tracking fitness bands probably don’t work at all
This is an excellent piece of journalism showing why you should be wary of remarkable claims in crowd-funded projects. While many sites wrote about these calorie-tracking fitness devices, this article dissects the claims and finds them wanting. [TechHive] - Gartner predicts PC shipments will drop this year while tablet shipments will rise
It doesn’t take a crystal ball to predict something that obvious, but Gartner tries to get a bit more specific by predicting a PC shipment decline of 6.6 percent and an increase in tablet shipments of 38.6 percent. [CNET] - Oppo Find 7a goes up for pre-order April 7th (probably for $499)
Oppo’s Find 7a is the cheaper of two new Find 7 phones the company plans to launch in the coming months. It has a 5.5 inch full HD display, a Snapdragon 800 CPU, 2800mAh battery, 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage. [Oppo] - SmartQ Z1 smartwatch can control XBMC with voice commands
Because controlling XBMC with your phone or tablet is so old-fashioned. [Smartwatch Fans] - Google Play Music finally adds browser-based song uploading
You’ll have to enable the experimental feature in your settings, but once you’ve done that you can drag and drop songs to your browser to upload them. You can also open a mini player so you can see what’s playing and skip tracks form any browser tab. [+Google Play]
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I’ll be one of those statistics that plan on replacing my “traditional PC” which Gartner seems to define as non-touch notebooks and desktops with a dockable UMPC. I’m just waiting for sub 8″ screened ones. Preferably with a similar form factor as the OQO sliders.
Amazon TV box launching just in time to pay for what was originally free on Prime.
They’ve gotten rid of a lot of free Prime shows because they don’t want to pay the fees the networks are charging, but they are raising Amazon Prime rates for end users next year.
Nice job Amazon, nice job!
https://gigaom.com/2014/03/25/no-more-iron-chef-food-network-shows-removed-from-amazon-prime-instant/
Wow, I hardly used the Prime video stuff because none of the stuff I wanted to watch were in HD for Windows and there isn’t even an app for Android. I guess the price hike gets you less than nothing. You’re actually getting less shows.
Good thing I emailed Amazon about disabling my auto-renewal of my Prime membership. I’ll be buying most of my electronics from Newegg now. I’ve noticed they’ve had cheaper prices and the free shipping gets me my stuff in 2-3 days.